A new poll shows President Barack Obama leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by 15 percentage points in Minnesota.

The results of Public Policy Polling’s latest survey of registered Minnesota voters show that 54 percent of Minnesotans support Obama, while 39 percent support Romney. Seven percent of voters are undecided.

Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a Democratic-leaning firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The group’s results mirror a separate poll conducted in May by SurveyUSA that shows 52 percent of registered Minnesota voters supporting Obama and 38 percent supporting Romney.

The last time PPP surveyed Minnesotans about their presidential preferences in January of this year, Obama lead Romney by 10 percentage points.

But as with a separate poll released by the same firm earlier this week regarding the marriage amendment, much of Obama’s new support is coming from independents. In January, they supported Obama by a margin of 9 percentage points; today, they support Obama by 23 percentage points.

The results show that “Minnesota is not going to be a swing state this fall,” said PPP president Dean Debnam in a press release.”Barack Obama’s standing is very solid there right now and it was one of Mitt Romney’s weakest states during the GOP primary season.”

Earlier this week, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina talked through strategy in this video , which labeled Minnesota as a “Leans Democratic” state – not a sure thing, as Debnam believes it to be.

The Obama campaign in Minnesota has repeatedly said it is not taking voters here for granted despite a comfortable lead.

PPP surveyed 973 registered Minnesota voters from May 31-June 3. The poll has 3.1 percent margin of error. Read more about the survey here.

About the blogger

Catharine Richert covers politics for MPR News, and writes PoliGraph, a fact-checking feature that gets behind the spin in Minnesota politics. She has also contributed to MPR’s coverage of the federal health care overhaul. Catharine joined the MPR newsroom in 2011 after finishing a master’s degree at the U of M’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Previously, Catharine worked for PolitiFact.com and Congressional Quarterly. She lives in Rochester with her husband and son.

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Sure, you keep telling yourself that. Their business depends on being accurate. Remember Daily Kos fired their polling firm because they were caught fudging their numbers, and the damage to its reputation put it under in something like a couple weeks. Since PPP works for Kos, though know if the make it up, they’ll be called on it and put out of business.